Get Involved

AASLH is a society of professionals and volunteers with diverse interests. Find a community that matches your specific area of focus or interest so you can easily network with others who share similar job issues and interests. These groups have moderated membership, but are open to all.
Activities include meal functions at AASLH Annual Meetings, workshops and other training opportunities, e-newsletters, and more.

The Business History group is designed for professionals within corporations or corporate museums who collect and interpret history or use history to market corporations, and provides a forum for networking and professional development.

The Legal History Community serves those working to preserve and promote legal and court history around the nation. They also serve as a reference for any history organization interested in using legal history in their interpretation. Its members include university faculty, state and federal court historians and educators, law librarians/archivists/researchers, judicial assistants, a U.S. Supreme Court curator, and independent historical societies affiliated with courts such as the U.S. Supreme Court Historical Society and the Historical Society of the New York Courts.

The AASLH Emerging History Professionals (EHP) Affinity Community supports, connects, and unites the newest generation of state and local history practitioners. This community provides support and professional development opportunities for emerging history professionals while creating and maintaining physical and digital spaces where EHPs can meet, discuss ideas, and network.

The Field Services Alliance (FSA) is an organized group of individuals, offices, and agencies that provide training opportunities, guidance, technical services, and other forms of assistance to local historical societies, archives, libraries, and museums in their respective states or regions.

The Historic House Museum group provides advice and direction for the development of programs and services that benefit historic house museums in the United States. AASLH maintains numerous resources for historic house museums and prides itself on having the largest number of historic house museums as members than any other professional museum organization.

The AASLH Military History Committee provides advice and direction for the development of programs and services that benefit U.S. history institutions with a military focus as well as museums/historic sites with military items in their collections

Robert G. Chenhall’s nomenclature for classifying man-made objects is the standard cataloging tool for thousands of museums and historical organizations across the United States and Canada. Nomenclature’s lexicon of object names, arranged hierarchically within functionally defined categories, has become a de facto standard within the community of history museums in North America.

The Small Museums Community assists America’s small museums in their endeavors, helping to make them stronger and more responsive to their communities. Through its programming and initiatives, AASLH plans to strengthen the small museum, an important steward of local and national history.

The Religious History Affinity Group provides a forum in which the history of all faith communities may be shared, understood, and appreciated. Additionally, the group serves as a resource for sharing best practices in research, interpretation, and exhibition of religious history, particularly for those organizations with minimal experience in these areas.

The Women’s History Affinity Group is comprised of those who are interested in presenting and encouraging accurate, compelling, diverse, and often controversial women’s history. The affinity group encourages thoughtful scholarship, curriculum, interpretive content, public and educational programs, and shares best practices and strategies for including women’s history in sites and locations of all size.